Wednesday, February 24, 2010

It starts with a quick explanation of everything you need to know about social games like Club Penguin and Farmville, but then goes on to cover future technologies and opportunities, with implications for education and society.

"First 10 minutes: a brief explanation of the psychology behind casual games of the farmville, webkins, mafia wars variety.

Then five minutes of a sort of strange digression about reality TV and organic groceries and authenticity, which to be honest I'm not really following what point he's trying to make here.

Then another digression about convergence and divergence in technology (technology diverges, except for things that fit in your pocket, like the iphone and the swiss army knife.)

At about 20 minutes he starts to get to the point: he's talking about applying these same psychological tricks to non-game situations: he namechecks fantasy football, geocaching, crowdsourcing games, weightwatchers point system, the"virtual plant" that shows up on your hybrid car's dashboard as existing examples.

After that he's describing near-future life as an MMO: points for brushing your teeth, doing your homework, eating your cornflakes. Gain levels for riding the bus instead of driving. Net-integrated sensors in every device to keep track of your score and upload them to Facebook or wherever. Tax incentives if you get a good enough score on your kid's report card or read the right books.

Basically he's describing an ubicomp panopticon, dressed up in a casual MMO point system"

Yes, we have the NFT on the South Bank, but it always feels a bit frusty and severe.

Curzon Midnight Movies take place once a month at the Curzon in Soho. This month (tonight) they've invited Edgar Wright to screen one of his favourites, Deathwish 3. Check out the specially commissioned retro poster above. It's the sort of film that would go down well at the Alamo! Join the fan page on Facebook for more information (1,800 members)

Both excellent initiatives. Just as the iPod was reckoned by some to have increased the audience for live music by making people want to experience the music collectively too, I'm sure lots of people who love to collect DVDs would like to see some of the classics on the big screen as well.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Why not compare what Coca Cola did for the 2006 Olympics in Turin with what they're doing now for the Olympics in Vancouver?

In 2006, the main site was this microsite, which is still live. They took 6 bloggers to Turin, and had them blog about their experiences. Visitors could interteract, but it was really all about what the bloggers thought. Innovative for the time.

In 2010 they've channelled all global activity into MyCoke - in effect their Olympic coverage has taken over the main site, rather than have a separate location.

They then have a special 'Olympic' section within it (ok, a microsite), but it's not specific to Vancouver, so can be reused for an Olympic activity.

It includes clips, the 'Six Pack' of American athletes (Coke clearly like the number 6), games, Olympic themed Rewards, and, in a tie up with NBC, a widget (here embedded into my blog) and a mobile widget.

I think that this shows how much more complex and rich the web has become in the last 4 years. It's more real time, has more video, involves more sponsored content and partnerships, and has a mobile element.

But most importantly, it's not a separate initiative. It's a continuation of what they're doing, both in the real world, and in other media.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Highlighting the problems with people broadcasting their location to all and sundry on Foursquare and similar, and then automatically linking it to twitter. It's essentially a feed from twitter listing all Foursquare checkins.

(I am writing this from my desk at home, with my pack of Staffies growling in the background)

Update - the serious side of this issue is well illustrating in this article, claiming that social media users may soon see a hike in their insurance premiums...

"Darren Black, head, home insurance, Confused.com, says the growth of location-based social networking is likely to have an impact on premiums, with hikes of up to 10% for users."Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering even using Google earth and street view to plan their burglaries with military precision. Insurance providers are starting to take this into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent," says Black"

Monday, February 15, 2010

Excellent case study from WeAreSocial. Producing extra strong marmite was clearly a logical step... (For those people outside the UK, Marmite has traded for several years on the 'you either loveit or hate it' theme)

Saturday, February 13, 2010

"Each artist or group has selected 30 songs that they consider to fit the genre of ‘ANTI RETRO’. Over the course of two weeks Spotify users are invited to vote for their favourite tracks. At the end of the voting period each of the artists’ new playlists, containing the 10 most voted-for songs, will be released at a rate of one per week with each artist providing a commentary to accompany their playlist."

Artists include Ash, Editors, Faithless and 3 others.

You get to vote for one song from each artist, then go through the the next artist.

Flattr is a new micropayment system - this viddo explains it, but basically:

I pay a set fee per month - say £5People that create stuff can put a Flattr button next to it, like a 'share this' or Digg buttonEach time I see something I like I click on that person's Flattr button, like I would with the other buttonsAt the end of the month my £5 is divided by the number of times I've clicked the button, and that amount given to each of the creators.I can also see that they could use the data to show the most liked things in a day, week, month, and fastest movers and so on.

I really like this. I think that lots of people would willingly pay small amounts for online content if it were easy to do so. There will always be freeloaders, but there will also be people who pay if it is easy to do so. Oh - and it's been created by Peter Sunde, one of the creators of the Pirate Bay.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

1 - In response to this book, written in the 1970s, about how the world would be in 2010:

"One of my friends points out that this future is very specific to the middle-class. The people delivering all those groceries, and driving the buses 24 hours a day, and presumably maintaining the garden-like restaurant (and somewhere, preparing the food pods to be dropped into the tubes) are not working from home three days a week."

2 - In response to this video about how augmented reality could change architecture:

"Much as I hate to piss on his future firework, this kind of thing totally ignores is that there are loads of things that don't really change because they don't need to. My kitchen looks quite nice and modern and the appliances are energy efficient, blah, blah, blah. But in terms of the basics and what they do (fridge, oven, stove, cupboards) most people from the 1960s would recognise it and be able to use it. For the same reason, although it's possible to have an intelligent house, most people are actually cool about turning the lights on and off with a wall switch when they enter a room."

This is simple, and brilliant - Benetton are opening up the casting of their 2010 Fall/Winter catalogue. Simply upload a photo, build a profile with more information, and let the crowd decide.

The top 100 get to appear in Benetton's new book, plus €200 to go shopping. The top 20 go to New York to model for the new catalogue. (I'd love to enter, but I'm a going to be a bit busy this year. Although there are some great pubs in New York...)

This is intriguing marketeting on YouTube. So far 4 video clips have been uploaded to the account iamamiwhoami, each with a short extract of music, and a disguised face. So who is is? Gaga? Christina? NIN? Goldfrapp? Debates are ragingonline.

But... I sometimes find it hard enough to keep up with email as it is. What I like about twitter is that I don't have to deal with lots of stuff that happened when I wasn't there - I just jump in afresh each time. I don't want all the @s and RTs filling up my inbox.

Very good news for them, and really encouraging that mainstream companies are using their service considering how new they are.

So what's going to happen with Foursquare? Over the past week I've had 2 or 3 friend requests a day, which suggests that it's gaining a lot of traction. I use various other services, like Qype, and Urbanspoon, and I definitely don't remember any of them having a similar level of buzz or takeup among my friends.

But there are lots of frustrations and gaps. Two quick examples:

1 - I can't use it to find things very easily. There's no way to find popular restaurants near my office. Admittedly if I search on Holborn (the area of London where I work) there are two recommendations at the bottom, but this isn't great.

The most recommended places near to meThe places I'm likely to enjoy in other cities, based on what I do in LondonA calendar of events I'd likeReasons to go back to places I haven't visited recently& so on.

I'm not trying to be snarky; they have an amazing opportunity, and they have genuine buzz at the moment. Make it even better!

They give away $1,300,000 a month, which isn't to be sneezed at - you can see the development of these projects bringing extra kudos to Pepsi as time goes on too. Sharing buttons make it easy to spread the word, and this is a very good 'big idea' and use of media.

"While touring around the world with their two latest releases “Let Me Introduce My Friends” (2006) and “Who Killed Harry Houdini” (2008) the members of I’m from Barcelona have been working on the upcoming “27 Songs from Barcelona”. Inspired by Kiss’ simultaneous release of four solo albums in 1978, “27 Songs from Barcelona” features one solo song for every member in I’m from Barcelona."

Some of the stories are well known (for example Trent Reznor and NIN), but here are two less well-known ones:

"The next example is Jill Sobule, who had a hit song in 1995 with "I Kissed A Girl" (not the Katy Perry song). Since then, however, she's been dropped from two record labels and had two independent labels she was signed to go out of business. When it came time to record her latest album, she decided to get her fans to help fund it. She'd already done an excellent job connecting with her fans, regularly interacting with them on Facebook, where she would hold fun contests each day and actually chat with them and respond to questions. She launched a website called "Jill's Next Record" that -- like Reznor and Freese -- offered up many options for how her fans could support her to fund a new album. They could pay $200 and get free access to any shows for a year. They could get their name mentioned on a "thank you" song. At $5,000, she would do a home concert at your house. She even noted you could charge for that one, and maybe even make some money. She ended up doing five or six such concerts. At $10,000 (described as the "weapons grade plutonium" level) you could sing on the album. This was meant to be a joke, but a woman in the UK purchased it, and Jill had her flown out to LA where she did, in fact, appear singing backing vocals on the album. Her goal was to raise $75,000, and she had no idea if she'd be able to reach that number at all. Yet, she broke through that number and ended up raising over $80,000 in just 53 days. With that, she was able to go into the studio and record a full scale production, including hiring famed producer Don Was to handle production."

&

"So, let's look at Corey Smith. In the earlier part of this decade, Smith was a high school teacher, playing open mic nights on weekends. But then, he started focusing on building his music career. He started playing numerous live shows, and really worked hard to connect with fans. He gave away all of his music for free off of his website, and used that to drive more fans to his shows. On top of that, he offered special $5 pre-sale tickets to many shows, which has a useful side effect: his biggest fans would convince many others to go as well, building up his fan base, and getting more people to go to more shows. He tried pulling his free music off of his website as an experiment, and saw that his sales on iTunes actually dropped when he did that. In 2008, mostly thanks to live shows, Corey was able to gross nearly $4 million. While giving his music away for free. Connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy worked wonders."